economics
You can add the Internal Revenue Service to the ranks of federal agencies conceding that raining taxpayer money on all and sundry to offset the negative effects of pandemic-era closures didn't go as well as intended. Not only was a program meant to offset the cost of paying workers during lockdowns and voluntary social-distancing prone to being gamed, but the "vast majority" of claims submitted to the program show evidence of being fraudulent. The Tax Man Is Shocked To Discover FraudstersIn the course of a detailed review of the Employee Retention Credit, "the IRS identified between 10% and 20...
Reason
During former President Donald Trump's term in office, he promised that higher tariffs on American imports would reduce the country's large trade deficit. At the time, many economists disputed that notion. Tariffs might marginally reduce the import side of the trade ledger, but they also reduce economic output (and therefore exports), so the net effect on the trade deficit was likely to be minuscule, they warned. No matter. In 2017, the White House's official Trade Policy Agenda highlighted how America's manufacturing trade deficit had grown from $317 billion in 2000 to $648 billion in 2016. T...
Reason
Today's guest is John Mackey, the co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods, who just released his memoir, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism. As befits the entrepreneur who revolutionized grocery shopping from a grim, pragmatic necessity into an exciting, multi-sensory adventure, Mackey's story is far from conventional and we talk frankly about the failures, successes, and psychedelics he encountered while reshaping how Americans think about food, fitness, and free enterprise. We also discuss Love.Life, the chain of holistic health and wellness clubs he's opening this su...
Reason
In an interview published this week by The New York Times, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) calls for a more muscular federal government to intervene even more aggressively in the economy than it already does, to create what Vance calls "incentives" for American workers. In doing so, Vance inadvertently reveals one of the major flaws in this line of analysis. Vance's opinions about these things carry significant weight, in no small part because he's on the shortlist to be Donald Trump's running mate. With an eye towards that possibility, the Times' Ross Douthat asked Vance to explain his "populist eco...
Reason
My guest today is economist and podcaster Glenn Loury, whose new memoir is titled Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. Born in 1948 and raised working-class in Chicago's predominantly African American South Side, Loury tells a story of self-invention, ambition, hard work, addiction, and redemption that channels Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Richard Wright's Native Son, Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, and Milton Friedman's Capitalism & Freedom. The first tenured black economist at Harvard, Loury emerged in the 1980s as a ubiquitous commenter on race and class ...
Reason
Inflation cooled slightly to 3.3 percent in May, the Department of Labor reported on Wednesday morning. That's a welcome sign that tees up the possibility the Federal Reserve will signal plans to cut interest rates later today. A rare one-two punch of economic news that will indicate whether the fight against inflation is being won makes Wednesday one of the most important days of the year for economic news, CNBC reports. This morning's consumer price report from the Department of Labor was an encouraging sign, and all eyes now turn to this afternoon's decision by the central bank's officials....
Reason
The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, by Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. Norton & Company, 384 pages, $29.99 Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank, thinks that taxation is a precondition for freedom, not a threat to it. The current political problem, he argues in The Road to Freedom, is that the right (which for Stiglitz includes libertarians as well as conservatives) rejects the Founding Fathers' idea of no taxation without representation in favor of opposing any taxation at all. This is a problem, he continues, because market failures are more extensive and seve...
Reason
California now leads the nation in imposing dumb wage laws. The state just raised the hourly minimum wage for fast food workers to $20. Gov. Gavin Newsom said, "We saw the inequities….We had a responsibility to do more." Unions pushed for the higher minimum, and in Democrat-run states, unions usually get what they want. CNN announced, "Half a million California fast food workers will now earn $20 per hour." Gullible leftists at the Center for American Progress claim, "A higher minimum wage would boost millions of families out of poverty and further stimulate the economy." Yippee! It's a happy ...
Reason
This week's featured article is "Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work" by Arnold Kling. This audio was generated using AI trained on the voice of Katherine Mangu-Ward. Music credits: "Deep in Thought" by CTRL and "Sunsettling" by Man with Roses The post <I>The Best of Reason</I>: Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work appeared first on Reason.com.
Reason
Last weekend, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman recorded an episode of The Reason Roundtable in front of a live audience at Reason Weekend in Boston, Massachusetts, with topics centered on both past and future U.S. vice presidents. 1:23—President Joe Biden proposes new tariffs on China 11:42—Potential Donald Trump V.P. picks 27:06—Kamala Harris 35:35—Favorite vice presidents of American history 42:49—This week's cultural recommendations 54:06—Audience Q&A Upcoming Reason Events: The Reason Roundtable LIVE!, June 6 in Washington, D.C. Reason Speakeasy:...
Reason
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